Stevens hosts third annual Research and Entreprenuership Day

Research and Entrepreneurship Day 2010

9/6/2010

Stevens Institute of Technology held its third annual Research and Entrepreneurship Day on April 30 in Canavan Arena. This event is designed to bring greater exposure to Stevens research programs, capabilities and achievements, and foster relationships with industry to offer insight and solutions to their business needs.

Those in attendance included alumni, industry representatives, federal and state funding agencies, faculty, post-docs, students and academic colleagues from other institutions who are involved in research programs at Stevens.

This year’s R&E Day was also simulcast, offering a chance for people who were unable to attend to view the conference via the web.

The day opened with Christos Christodoulatos, Associate Provost for Academic Entrepreneurship, providing opening remarks.

“There’s a lot of exciting news in research and technology development that we’ll to report to you today,” said Christodoulatos. “Today’s faculty presentations and technology demonstrations by our faculty and students fuel the power of our innovation engine.”

He was followed by Stevens’ President Harold J. Raveché and George P. Korfiatis, Provost and University VP, who welcomed attendees.

Raveché emphasized that innovation and entrepreneurship are part of the Stevens’ legacy, and have been an integral part of the Stevens academic experience since the university’s founding.

“Right from the beginning, in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology was involved in the connections between faculty research, frontier level research, pioneering research and its applications to the needs of society,” said Raveche.

He also noted that the term Technogenesis reflects Stevens’ history.

“This day is a very special day for us. It reflects our tradition, and it reflects what is going on at Stevens,” said Raveche.

Korfiatis underscored the importance of the university’s research and entrepreneurship efforts.

“I want to thank each of you for being here and helping us develop and expand our network and partnership in this endeavor, which is research and entrepreneurship,” said Korfiatis. “Entrepreneurship and innovation are the undercutting themes across the board in everything we do: Not just in research, but in education and how we architect the academic enterprise.”

“If we’re going to get the infrastructure squared away, if we’re going to have resilient America, a lot of people are going to have to be involved,” said Erickson. “This is not a science problem, it’s not a political problem, it’s not a lawyer problem, it’s not an insurance problem. It’s all of the above and many, many more.”

He emphasized that the impact of population on infrastructure is far reaching, and involves everyone across the country and around the world.

“The underlying assumption is that our behavior will pretty much continue they way it has been,” said Erickson. “I bet most everyone has tele-worked for a day or two. But what if everybody only went to work four days a week? What’s the impact on the subway, what’s the impact on the PATH, what’s the impact on New Jersey Transit and Long Island Railroad? We have to be thinking about these things.”

“My vision, looking down the road, is that by the work that we all do, the nation is more resilient,” said Erickson.

After Erickson’s address, Malcolm R. Kahn, Vice President, Enterprise Development & Licensing, discussed innovations at Stevens and introduced Stevens start-up companies. Kahn focused on Stevens innovations and some of the creative approaches Stevens has taken on the commercialization side.

“I look at today as a celebration of both the engineering capabilities that you’ll see in many of the companies we’re going to present today,” said Kahn. “And it’s a celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit that was spawned at Stevens by our Technogenesis program. It is really driven by a world-class faculty and a thoughtful process of development that is oriented toward true solutions.”

Kahn noted that the work coming out of Stevens was exemplary, especially when considering the university’s relatively small size.

“You’re going to see today a very broad range of technology and companies that really represent a much wider technology perspective than you would anticipate at a school of Stevens’ size,” said Kahn.
Presentations included:

* · Attila Technologies, which has created a revolutionary and patented software capability that allows mobile devices to simultaneously communicate over multiple wireless data networks and frequencies dynamically. This increases the capacity/bandwidth, the level of security and makes its users exponentially less vulnerable to existing network limitations, disruptions or network failures. This multi-network enabling capability is ideal for a wide variety of applications including high security communications, first responders, multi-user Internet, video, VoIP, interactive collaboration, and real-time anywhere surveillance.

* ID 8 Systems – Enterprise (formerly MyIdeaShare), a web 2.0 software and services solution company that helps organizations motivate and engage their employees to generate more and better ideas that will positively impact the bottom-line. ID 8 Systems is the brainchild of Peter Koen, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at Stevens, a renowned thought-leader, and long-time consultant in the areas of ideation and innovation.

* CADeyes, an advanced mobile mapping system designed to create dimensionalized site and contour maps, and as-built drawings of both exterior and interior of building structures.

* Seahorse Power, LLC, an offshore ocean energy technology company with a patented second-generation wave energy generation approach. The Wave Energy Harnessing Device (WEHD) not only converts ocean wave energy into electricity, it also tunes waves to increase the electricity production capabilities by four times first generation systems. Each platform is designed to power 400 American homes and would be deployed in “farms” large enough to power significant sections of the eastern seaboard from New England to Florida.

* InStream Media LLC, one of Stevens’ spinout companies. The company has developed a sophisticated suite of algorithms and internet applications based on psycho-linguistics, information theory, and advanced text mining that can identify deceptive text contained in emails, social networking sites, blogs, SMS, advertisements, and so on.

The morning session closed with an address by keynote speaker Michael R. Singer, executive director, Security Technology, AT&T. Singer joined AT&T in 1990 as a software developer. Since 2000, Singer has managed a variety of work centers responsible for provisioning, web hosting and most recently, cybersecurity.

Singer’s presentation included a discussion of AT&T’s innovations and the importance of security innovations. He noted that security issues, such as those from botnets and spamming, still pose significant network and system threats.

“We have about 800,000 systems to worry about in security, and about 300,000 people on our team. So it’s a very large enterprise. Securing those assets and helping our customers in the area of security is a tall task and an area where we’ve had to innovate a lot,” said Singer.

He continued on to emphasize the critical need for creative approaches in security.

“It’s an area where the industry needs a lot more great ideas and more people with creativity, because the people who are attackers are certainly going to change what they use to compromise infrastructure,” said Singer.

The morning session closed with presentations of first patent issuance plaques and faculty technology presentations, during which faculty spoke about technology in various stages of development. These included:

The presentations also included participation from a student group, who discussed MEDCC, remote diagnostics via computer for Rwanda.

Afternoon Session
After an introduction by Raveche, Frank M Fawzi, CEO and chairman of the board at IntelePeer, gave the luncheon keynote address. During his talk, Fawzi, who received his master’s degree in Management Information Systems from Stevens, focused on areas he felt would be helpful to students who are contemplating their career paths after graduation.

At IntelePeer, Fawzi is the guiding force in supporting the company’s growth efforts in its drive to be the leading innovator of communications services and applications for top-tier carriers, voice service providers, enterprise software and web companies.

The Student Technology Pitch Olympics proved once again to be a highlight of the day.

The competition gave teams of students two minutes to present an elevator pitch to a panel of judges. The concept refers to the short amount of face time an entrepreneur might have if he or she could corner a venture capitalist in an elevator. Each pitch was judged based on the quality of the elevator pitch, viability of the business plan and actual intent to pursue business.

First prize and $3,000 went to Immunoclue, a rapid diagnostic device developed by Steve DeFroda, Zoe Folchman-Wagner, Jen McGuire, Pete Movilla and Marc van de Rijn.

Second prize and $2,000 went to Easy Keys, an automated system that is designed to allow anyone, regardless of experience, to tune a piano at the turn of a key. The system was developed by the team of Kieran Walters, Patrick Rienzo, Rusell Jones, Victoria Theese and Tom Oliphant

Third prize and $1,000 went to Sleep Hapnea, a sleep apnea mask paired with a medical grade adhesive that seals itself to the face preventing air leakage from standard CPAP therapy in patients diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. The mask was developed by team members Olga Djomparin, George Blazeski, Dana Perriello, Erin Broderick and Lisa Iannotto.

Following the Pitch Olympics, attendees were able to attend a faculty poster session and also see demonstrations and displays of some of the devices featured in the Pitch Olympics. In addition, several Senior Design projects were also on display.

“This year’s event reached a new level of excellence and success,” said Korfiatis. “The participation by our faculty, students, the leaders of Stevens-nurtured spin-out companies, combined with the robust attendance by external constituents and supporters, made this an event that we are all truly proud of. I would specifically like to thank Associate Provost Christos Christodoulatos and Vice President Malcolm Kahn for their great effort and dedication. It is through such leadership that Stevens steadily moves to the top tier of national research universities.”